


Foresight

by TLvop



Category: My Boy Builds Coffins (Song)
Genre: Gen, New Year's Resolution 2011, Plague, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone has to see what's coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foresight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foundwanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundwanders/gifts).



Look.

Out beyond the pathway there is a field, and beyond the field -- if you are heading westward, if you leave straight from the path and cut across the high grass as it tickles you along your legs -- there is a marsh; you can see the marshbirds rising even now, white and grey and speckled-black against the sky.

What lies beyond the marsh? I would not advise you cross it; if you disappeared, no one would find you and no one would be brave enough to look -- so if you plan to disappear, maybe you ought to cross it, or let it be known that that is your intention. No, be safe; cut around it. It will take you most of two days to reach where it ends, and most of another two to come around to the far side of where you were. But at least you will not face worse than flea-and-skeeter bites, and legs sore-whipped from the grass's sharp edge.

And there you stand, at the far side of the marsh, facing west. It's another land from your own; beyond the ownership of people who you have grown with. Maybe you know something about this far-land, about its myths and its stories, or about the people who live there. You know a woman in town, and her great-grandfather came from the West, though maybe it was further away than this West.

Maybe this West will be far enough for you; maybe it won't. But I know that as you stand there, and look across the sun-warmed farmland, marsh crackling at your back and silence in front of you, you will hear bells ringing in the distance.

They will only get louder as you walk into the farm land, and why shouldn't they? They are the sound of civilization.

This is what you would think, wouldn't you? Yes, because here bells are the sound of business deals and life given form.

Things are different in that part of the world, across the marsh. You would see that the farm lands are going to sprout, and there's a spreading untidiness as you walk -- not like the wilderness but not like home, either. You'd see that the people are absent, or wary; that there is no open hand of greeting or open-eyed wonder at a stranger from the passing child.

There are very few children.

That's because in that part of the West, bells are the sound of dying. Further on, it's banners hung red in the air -- to the South it's wailing and clanging. Here, well--

You know better than me what heralds death in your home. All I know is that eventually, it will come here, too. The coughing and the racking and the quiet. It's a misery that's found us, in these later days. A misery and a curse.

That's why I'm travelling; no, not to escape the plague. I know it will find me, eventually, but before then I'm trying to do the human thing. I'm trying to prepare you for it. There's dignity in that.

I ask only for a place to stay, a supply of wood, free hunting rights, and a plot in your churchyard for my wife and I should I meet we meet our ends before we're through. I won't leave until you ask me to, or you don't need me anymore.

No, I'm not looking for money. Everyone deserves the dignity of a final place to stay. I'm not a philosopher, or a medical man, or a judge. Mayor, you can think what you like, but I'm only doing what I know how to do:

I build coffins.

**Author's Note:**

> I realize you already got fic for this, but I hadn't seen it before I wrote this up (it's been sitting in my head since I read the request last year) -- hope you like it :). A very, very last minute NYR.


End file.
